[country soul]

Although I bred sheep for 15 years I ve never castrated a ram lamb,I largely keep Hampshire Down cross and texel cross ewes which when put to any terminal sire means I get my ram lambs away well before they become a nuisance.This year I ve got some mule type ewes aswell and although their lambs are sired by a texel I think they will be slower to  reach slaughter weight.So  I think I shall castrate them.My question is does is how do lambs react and for how long is the stress likely to last?

[Tim W]

http://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/ringing-lambs-tails.54564/

I run a maternal breed and don't castrate anything , they finish ok as long as you keep them away from the girls
Castrates have lower growth rates than entire males 

[country soul]

thanks Tim ,that's interesting to know I'm more inclined not to castrate anything I ,m not squeamish but putting a ring on the balls of such small animals  doesn't quite feel right.I can easyily separate them at weaning from the  females so that's not a prob.
How do you market the ram lambs?

[Marches Farmer]

I sell entire crossbred and Badger Face ram lambs as stores immediately after weaning. 

[Tim W]

thanks Tim ,that's interesting to know I'm more inclined not to castrate anything I ,m not squeamish but putting a ring on the balls of such small animals  doesn't quite feel right.I can easyily separate them at weaning from the  females so that's not a prob.
How do you market the ram lambs?

My ram lambs go direct to the abattoir and then into Sainsburys---150 going tomorrow

On a smaller scale maybe butcher them and sell direct----don't sell in the mart , any chance or excuse and the buyers will deduct( least that's my experience)

[mowhaugh]

I've castrated a lot of 24 hour old lambs today.  They don't particularly enjoy it, obviously, but the recovery time varies.  Some were back on their feet, skipping about, feeding etc 15 minutes later, for some it is a good couple of hours.  They were done about 10 this morning, and were all quite ahppily in the field by 3 this afternoon.

[shep53]

 Are you looking at the mule x tx and thinking that because they are a different conformation they won't finish as quickly , they will probably receive more milk and grow faster just look narrower  and be taller

[Crbecky10]

We have Mules and are put to a Texel, they can be born in February/March and gone by the end of June, they're all castrated.

[SallyintNorth]

If it's a good crossing Texel, there's no reason your Mule x lambs won't finish in a season.  But depending on where you are, and when ovine hormones start to flow... 

BH used to say the thing about entires growing faster than castrates too.  But now we castrate some and cannot verify that idea.    In fact, any that are still here when the hormones start do *much* better if castrated - tup lambs seem to stop growing when the hormones kick in

We castrate by ringing at 24-72 hours, or some that we couldn't catch  at up to a week.  In terms of recovery time, the earlier the better.  I rarely have any still struggling after 30 minutes; I had one flaked out for two hours a few weeks back and I was very worried.  (He was fine, of course, just took him longer than most.)

The only thing I'd say agin castrating is that a tup lamb can eat more cake and not slab on the fat than a wether.  But since we find that they grow at the same rate, it could suggest that actually the wethers need *less* cake to finish... 

The other factor I observe is this.

Tup lambs, or wether lambs, that finish before August are sent when ready.  We get good (great) grades and good deadweights.  Once we're in August, he sends anything with testicles on that's fat enough.  We still get fabulous grades - but the deadweight average drops as we start to send smaller tup lambs.  If those lambs had been castrated, we'd have kept them an extra month and got another kilo on them

[country soul]

Thanks to all comments above I  ve castrated the rams off the mule ewes my down bred lambs will remain entire as in the past.
A couple of comments re mule types of which I never  had before and I only had 9,so not truly representative but they;
jump walls with ease!
make a lot of noise when they expect to be fed and again jump walls
on the positive side they do appear to be good mothers

[Womble]

After reading this thread, I plucked up the courage to go out and ring one of our two-day old tup lambs this afternoon.

Unfortunately he doesn't have any balls yet: it's easy to see how this process can go wrong, isn't it?! 

[country soul]

its tricky to get right first time as was my case but I  watched a farmers weekly vid on Youtube  first!!! It not a practice I shall relish doing .

[Womble]

No it's ok CS, it wasn't me who lacked the balls to do it yet - it was the lamb! 

[SallyintNorth]

Sometimes they are shy, Womble

I've got used to fiddling about and getting the little so-and-sos to drop down nicely so I can snare them.  One lamb has one testicle too reticent to catch so far this year, but I've managed all the others. 

My little primitives, though, the wee balls are too wee for the ring at 2 days old, and by a week I am usually not able to catch the lambs!    So last year I had to have the vet castrate 4 later on ... I'd prefer to avoid that if I can.

[Womble]

That's the one Sally!  Mum is busy teaching her children that people are scary and must be run away from (which is fair enough when I have an elastrator in my hand - I'd run too!).

I did try coaxing the testes down but only managed it with one. Will try again this afternoon if it still hasn't learned how to run quicker than me.